Business And Economy Archive

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CreatureHypnotizer wrote:

I think making galaxy wide searches is a mistake.

It will shift the competition towards a market with fewer non price factors.

Currently the resource market is a monopolistic (a market with many competitors where the customer can differentiate between the merchants)market where the merchants can compete over customers based on alot of other factors than price. Building a clientel of crafters and a name for yourself, to attract customers by always having the right stuff in stock in large quantities and rtreating your customers with the best service is a part of making a good living on resources. This is the fun factor and one of the strenths of SWG merchant system.

Making it possible to search for stuff server wide will narrow the market down to a perfect competition market, with basically only one competition parameter: price.

Buyers will no longer have as as strong a relationship to the individual merchants and the market will be solely based on lowest price. Ofc this will make resources cheaper overall......but will also remove the incentive to become a household resource dealer, offering non price factors like service, volume, variation, orders for specific resources, since you wont need to search for the good stuff....

I really like the economic system of SWG, making server wide searches will tilt it more and more towards EQ2 style merchantship. Next well only be able to sell when online and at our shop......

I hate the econic system of *EQ2 and that is actually one of the reason i have quit it and come back to SWG...

Abe

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velm wrote:

I see alot of people are concerned about price. Now, to be honest, credits are NOT hard to come by in this game. If I am looking at something, price is one of the last things I am looking at. I want quality. If I am looking for a T-21 Rifle, do I really care if one is selling for 85,000 or if one is selling for 55,000? not really. I want one that does the most damage, coupled with good speed. If there are two that are identical in speed and damage, which I really doubt, then where is the vendor? Since I have been spending most of my time on Dant lately, and there is a vendor on Dant selling it for 90,000, while there is one on Talus for 45,000. Guess, which one I will go with, give up? The one on Dant. 45,000 credits difference, whoohoo. That is about 20 minutes of work or less, and i do not even call it 'work'. I call it working up on my Rifleman skills and harvesting as I go.

There are those that say 'impulse buying will go away'. Wrong. If I am at thatT-21 vendor, I am STILL going to go through what other rifles he has. SHEER CRAZINESS! Yes, I know, it sounds crazy, why on earth I would do something like that. Well, I would do something like that because, he might, just might, have a better Jawa rifle than my current one, or a better spraystick. Yes, even though I did NOT specifically look for those other things. When I am done looking at that vendor, I will also see any of the other vendors that might interest me. I am always on the look out for powerups and other things that might strike my fancy. Why on earth would I pass it up? There could be another vendor selling speeders there. I could always use another speeder, Night Sisters love to destroy my rides, so always a good thing to keep spares.

I was looking for armor repair tools once, I eventually gave up because I could not find any. Then one day, I stopped by a vendor and happened to look at another vendor there, and there were a few crates. I was just lucky to find that vendor.

Another time I was looking for crafting stations for my guild. For as far as I was concerned, price was not a factor. I spent days looking. I looked at the vendors around CNET. The few that did have them were of average quality, 14.15 or so. I had checked the entire planet of Corelia, went to various vendors on Naboo, again, no luck in finding anything decent. I found a FEW that were of average quality, but NOTHING spectacular. I FINALLY found a vendor on the trade forums. The price for a set of five 44.16 crafting stations was 400,000. I did not think twice about it. The moral of the story is: It was difficult to find crafting stations at all, and even more time consuming to find good quality ones.

A galaxywide vendor search will not drastically kill off vendors. It will allow people to go to vendors who would otherwise not have their business. Price is not as crucial as most people think in this game. People will still stop by other vendors in the area for impulse buying. There is still a good chance people will stick with thier favorite vendor out of loyalty.

Now, I do believe there is one thing that could be done to make some vendors happy. Allow them to show thier goods on the galaxywide vendor search or not. I do know some vendors that do NOT want that much business. They play the game for fun and not want thier entire shop cleaned out in a week. They like the repeat customers they have and the business they get from word of mouth.

No one knows how it will be done to begin with. I would like to see, with the above paragraph, a terminal in NPC and/or PC's where a person could look, then have to travel to the vendor location and purchase said item.

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Well said.

Velm took the time to write his viewpoint and he got one stared without even a response? Pretty weak.